The Ebola battle: How Nigeria fought it.

On Monday October 20, I registered in my diary that the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Nigeria Ebola free. From the onset, many panicked for the fact that, the deadly disease had come so close to us here in Cameroon hence raising fears, especially considering our care-free attitude to situations.

We seem to have the tendency to take things for granted, even such bad news as the scourge of a killer, sometimes does not mean much to us until we are touched.

This notwithstanding, I am sure that the fear of this disease crossing over from our neighbour was not my concern alone. So when last Monday Nigeria was declared Ebola free, my next concern was, how did they do it?

Gradually I began to search around for every piece of information that will help me stock my diary. The first information I came across was the name of the first person who brought Ebola to Nigeria from Liberia. He was one Patrick Sawyer.

I was informed that Sawyer left a hospital in Liberia against the wishes of the medical staff and flew to Lagos. It was here that he was tested and found infected and was rushed to a hospital.

Having discovered this first Ebola case in Nigeria, the Port Health Services launched what has become known as “Contact Tracing” to limit the spread of the disease. This was followed by the immediate creation of an emergency operation that coordinated and supervised the national response.

Health officials are said to have used several sources including phone records and flight manifest to track down nearly nine hundred people who might have been exposed to this virus through Patrick Sawyer, and as soon as people developed symptoms related to Ebola, they were immediately isolated in Ebola treatment facilities.

Without waiting to see whether a suspected case tested positive, it became a matter of tracking down every one who had had contact with the patient.

Thousands of people who had made contacts through visits to the patient were traced and tested. Contact tracing is therefore the simplest and most reliable procedure in halting the spread. It is the same measures that are being applied in the US in closing their gates to the invasion of Ebola.

There are other reports that Patrick Sawyer became violent in the course of his isolation, insisting that he should be carried to one of the miracle healing churches in Lagos. But the Health Services turned down his request. He was confined against his will, for the genuine reason that if he is allowed free movement, he could have contacts with people and thus spread the virus.

Why he fled the hospital to come to Lagos which has a population of about 20 million was strongly questioned. At the miracle Healing centres, Sawyer could have succeeded in infecting many and this would have been tragic for the Lagos population in the short term and for Nigeria as a whole in the long term. This is how Nigeria succeeded in stopping the spread of Ebola and Nigeria was declared Ebola free by World Health Organisation (WHO).

The outcome of this success story is that Nigeria has offered to send about eighty health officials to the three affected West African countries, to help stop the spread using their experience at home back in Nigeria. So what lessons have we learnt from this success story?